The Superlative Man soars overhead, coming to the rescue of people in danger. The tabloids splash his every exploit across the front pages. The entire metropolis is in awe of him - except for Harvey Gander, whose parents died in a freak automobile accident caused by the Superlative Man as he was dashing off to another adventure.

Gander is a lonesome cub reporter for the Metropolitan Meteor, and when he is assigned a story about people saved by the Superlative Man, he stumbles on a conspiracy to expose the hero as a fake. The stakes are raised when two heavies threaten him just for interviewing Natasha Nyle, a footloose blonde from the Outer Borough.

As the young reporter chases stories through the city's dark byways, moons over a slip of a girl named Violet Hayes, and falls under the spell of the wizened newshound Elmo Jade, he uncovers dark truths about the American superhero, while struggling to prove that he is, in his own way, a superlative man.